This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention that is recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Certain abbreviations that may be found in the description and/or in the Figures are herewith defined as follows:    BCCH broadcast control channel    LTE long term evolution    MBMS multimedia broadcast-multicast service    MBSFN MBMS single-frequency network    MCC mobile country code    MCCH MBMS control channel    MCN mobile network code    MNO mobile network operator    M-RNTI MBMS radio network temporary identifier    PDCCH physical downlink control channel    RNTI radio network temporary identifier    SIB system information block    TMGI temporary mobile group identity    UTRAN universal terrestrial radio access network
In LTE Rel-10 standards, a Multimedia Broadcast-Multicast Service (MBMS) is only optimized for single-carrier deployments. In this type of deployment, for terminals in an RRC_Idle state, cell reselection rules make no exceptions for the purpose of MBMS reception. Further, terminals in an RRC_Connected state in this type of network have no means of informing the network of their possible interest in MBMS reception. Thus, in either of these states the terminals are not provided with means for uninterrupted reception of MBMS services available on a certain frequency.
To understand the problem addressed by this invention, one only needs to consider that a terminal in an RRC_Connected state, possibly capable of receiving information on only one frequency carrier at a time, is engaged in a unicast data transfer on one frequency carrier while MBMS service sessions are being or start to be broadcast on another carrier. It is submitted, that in order to try to inform such a terminal of MBMS services being or becoming available on different frequencies, a signalling mechanism is needed on top of what is specified in LTE Rel-10.